The networked computing environment (e.g., cloud computing environment) is an enhancement to the predecessor grid environment, whereby multiple grids and other computation resources may be further enhanced by one or more additional abstraction layers (e.g., a cloud layer), thus making disparate devices appear to an end-consumer as a single pool of seamless resources. These resources may include such things as physical or logical computing engines, servers and devices, device memory, storage devices, among others.
Challenges can exist when attempting to transition a computing environment from one configuration to another. Specifically, an impact of a new configuration on a production computing system can be unknown and difficult to ascertain. Moreover, a revision of a system configuration can cause backup recovery points taken over a given period of time to become obsolete, since a restoration workflow can be difficult to define in the context of a superseded recovery point.